So, this is really a kind of hoax, right? Like Joachin Phoenix's thing?

Their hope is probably that they can drum up enough donations/sponsorship to keep them going and skim a bit off the top. There's little chance their will achieve their $4bn target, a yet smaller chance that will be anywhere near sufficient to fund the entire project (or even the launch and coast hardware alone). With their selection process geared towards 'interesting people' rather than competent potential astronauts they may be planning to downsize to a vaguely Mars-500-themed Big Brother TV show instead and use that as their payout.

Whatever those challenges may be, they "could be aired" either on TV networks or online, which would finally fulfill the reality-TV angle that has long hovered over the project thanks to its founder Bas Lansdorp's ties to TV series Big Brother.

Okay, this makes sense now. Winning applicants have a 0% chance of going to Mars but a 100% chance of making a terrible reality show.

I think it's a neat idea, but I wouldn't trust the people putting together this mission. I wouldn't be surprised if they get to the end of the whole thing and then admit it was a hoax. I will say that if they DO launch a rocket, the chances of the astronauts dyeing an early death are alarming high even assuming unlimited budget and the best minds being used on this project.

Even saying that, I wouldn't do it even if I thought it was 100% safe. Leaving behind Earth and everyone I know isn't for me.

I don't know that this comment will be popular, but I'm not sure any women should be included, or to put it another way I'm not sure any men should be included. I'd want an armwrestling match between any two passengers to be a fair fight. If you're on a one-way trip of essentially certain death, you're about as close to a might-makes-right sort of total social impunity as you can get. Cameras and remote mission controllers wouldn't be able to do anything if the Lord of the Flies shows up.

If such a voyage is ever made, which is not to put too much confidence in this one in particular, the first group should be comprised of people about as evently matched physically as possible and with as few potential 'complicating factors' as can be arranged.

(Sex drive won't go away in a single-sex group, of course, but the chances of that being a source of tension should be mitigated as far as possible. But I'm not even talking primarily about sexuality; this is mostly about balance of raw physical power.)

Willing to be convinced otherwise; maybe I'm just too cynical for my own good.

So still no technical plan, no professional expertise or any sort of coherent schedule, just a neat pitch and a nifty hashtag! Mars One really has to be one of the best marketing scams in history, I seriously can't believe that people are still buying this. This is something that annoys me every time someone brings it up and one of the few things that makes me physically angry, I have almost perfected my rant out of repetition: There are plenty of people with ACTUAL PLANS to put humans on mars and explore space, if you want to be inspired by space exploration look at NASA or Elon Musk. These guys have nothing but a snazzy sales pitch for a far-fetched reality TV show, and a few million dollars they got from the suckers who signed up.

So still no technical plan, no professional expertise or any sort of coherent schedule, just a neat pitch and a nifty hashtag! Mars One really has to be one of the best marketing scams in history, I seriously believe that people are still buying this. This is something that annoys me every time someone brings it up and one of the few things that makes me physically angry, I have almost perfected my rant out of repetition: There are plenty of people with ACTUAL PLANS to put humans on mars and explore space, if you want to be inspired by space exploration look at NASA or Elon Musk. These guys have nothing but a snazzy sales pitch for a far-fetched reality TV show, and a few million dollars they got from the suckers who signed up.

/rant

I'd seriously consider having you read the following links and take back your rant: